The South Gallery Archive
Ileana Tolibia: The Impossibility of Nostalgia
The South Gallery will feature the paintings of Ileana Tolibia in her solo exhibition, The Impossibility of Nostalgia.
Ileana Tolibia is a Cuban-born artist based in Miami, Florida. She is known for her evocative and richly textured oil paintings that delve into the intricacies and paradoxes of human emotions. Her works can be characterized by the skillful and unexpected layering of ambiguous mixed images, which are inspired and chosen from nature, dreams, memories, art history, poetry, mythological and folkloric stories, photographs found in books and magazines, and even from social media. Through painting she metaphorically explores how sensory perceptions shape our experiences of our environment, leading us to become aware of complex interconnections, correlations, and congruences. As rapid technological advancement is aggressively changing the ways in which we interact with and engage our surroundings, Tolibia's vivid works, filled with swirling fluid brushstrokes, encourage viewers to engage in a reflective journey through memory and sentiment.
The Elastic Mind
The Elastic Mind is an art exhibition conceived and curated by Kohl King, showcasing a variety of digital and video artworks from selected artists from around the globe. The exhibition creatively addresses and/or relates to the theme of the Elastic Mind.
Vladimir Zimakov: Random Things Just Happen
Several years ago, Artist Vladimir Zimakov started working on illustrating the nonsensical poem by Lewis Carroll called Haddocks' Eyes. The project resulted in a limited-edition book, using a combination of relief printmaking techniques, which he published under his own imprint Wild Pangolin Press. The approach that he took in creating this book was very similar to staging a theater play. Each character had to be effectively presented and each scene from the poem had to be well orchestrated on a page; for a project of this scope, everything needs to be carefully planned out and executed. There is little room for error or chance.
Kaleidoscope: My Culture, My Pride Dionne H.E. Polite
Polite is a self-taught artist who hails from Guyana. As a young child, she danced, painted, and indulged in many things that fed her creativity. In the early 1970s, Polite and her family immigrated to the United States, settling in New York. After the move, she stopped engaging in many creative pursuits she once loved to concentrate on the responsibilities of being the oldest child. She returned to painting again only a few years ago as an adult. At first, it was a way to connect with her aging parents and, later, to help her grieve through their deaths, which happened within the same year. Her artwork reflects her culture, history, and childhood experiences in Guyana and daily life here in South Florida. With paint, she tells her story her way.
Flowers
"Youth is leading the revolution. Since the murder of George Floyd, the resurgence of street activism from Black Lives Matter to Stop Asian Hate, Free Palestine, and advocacy for trans, immigrant, and sex workers' rights has filled the streets of New York City. Black queer and Black trans voices have come to the forefront of the fight. Their photographs make up most of this portfolio-portraits of people I have met at marches and rallies as well as actions that center and uplift marginalized communities. I started thinking of these young activists as flowers, full of beauty and life at the dawn of a new era." Stas Ginzburg
Collecting Somewhere
Galloway is known for her large, tiled photo-based print installations, but for her 2022 solo exhibition at The South Gallery, she will create an intimate space that will reflect a combination of her studio and her home, allowing the public to explore and engage with her studio practice. The works exhibited will include in-process quilt squares, large prints of wheat-pasted landscapes, collections of meaningful postcards, and small drawings of empty signage. The open floor space of the gallery will be furnished with a collection of thrift store chairs and the artist will be in residence at the gallery twice a week during the exhibition on Tuesdays and Thursdays from 10 a.m. - 1 p.m.
Glam Camp
From January 31 to February 25, The South Campus Gallery hosted a new art exhibition entitled GLAM CAMP by Enrique Cirino. Cirino is a South Florida mixed media artist who is originally from Venezuela. His unique artworks entertain viewers by combining vivid colors and textures, showcasing personal memories, storylines, and narratives of love, loss, and excess. Mainly influenced by the extravagance of the Baroque and Rococo periods in Art History, Cirino also uses selected found imagery from his collection of magazines that range from as far back as the 1950s to the present day. Through the medium of collage combined with acrylic and spray paint and any recycled surfaces, he can salvage, Cirino creates a renewed Pop/ Urban feel in each of his pieces. Often his works have elaborate frames which are painted or collaged upon, making them integral to canvases and stories. His work not only reveals his absolute love and dedication to the aesthetic style of Camp, but he also feels his art encourages viewers to consider what their own views of beauty are; "It is important to me that my art makes you think, encourages you to develop a point of view, but also makes you feel a little bit uncomfortable," says Cirino.
